Ubuntu 9.04 Release Candidate

The road to the final version of Ubuntu 9.04 still has the release candidate as its penultimate goal. Not much has changed in it.

With the announcement of it first release candidate, Ubuntu 9.04 is finally where it wants to be. Not too many changes should happen from this point on, but the RC does bring some improvements. Among them is integration with the recent GNOME 2.26.1 bug fix release. The kernel version will step up to 2.6.28-11.37, so having a Wacom tablet no longer requires manual configuration. Button mapping configuration may still not be supported, but you can still set it manually by adding an fdi file to /etc/ha/fdi/policy/.

Ubuntu's announcement also includes the usual helpful hints. One of them is that the software is "almost ready" for general use, but not quite. The ext4 filesystem can trigger a kernel panic and filesystem corruption when accessing large (more than 10 GByte) files, which the final version should resolve. Also, the mythtv frontend in Mythbuntu shows some overlarge fonts under circumstances, another candidate for a final version fix.

Just a month after the release of Ubuntu 8.10, the first alpha of Ubuntu 9.04 has become available. The next distro version should boot more quickly, require less power, integrate more web services and include a backup solution.

The arrival of Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” signaled a new era for the whole family of distributions that use Ubuntu as a base. Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Mythbuntu, and other Ubuntu derivatives soon followed with new releases of their own projects.